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Hello and welcome to Hopewell Federal Credit Union’s blog – Ask Al. That’s me, Al Smith, President and CEO of Hopewell Federal Credit Union, located in Newark and Heath, Ohio. This blog is a completely new adventure for us, but one that I hope you will find worthwhile.

At Hopewell Federal, we like to say we’re delivering personalized banking solutions. While that’s true, I figure it’s better to walk the talk, so to speak-thus, we’ve hopped on board the blogging bandwagon.

In a nutshell, my goal for Ask Al, is to encourage anyone with financial concerns or questions, to drop me a line. Members, non-members, it doesn’t matter, we want to help you. Now, I can’t promise that I have all the answers but with more than 40+ years in the credit union industry, I’d like to think that I’ve picked up a thing or two, during my tenure. Here’s just a couple of examples of questions that we receive on a weekly basis here at our offices:

“What’s the difference between a bank and a credit union?”

“Do I have to work at a certain company to join a credit union?”

“I’m in my mid-30’s and saved nothing for retirement, how do I get started?”

“I’m in major debt from college loans, how do I dig out from under?”

“What’s the best way to save money?”

“What’s the difference between a re-fi and a HELOC?”

You name it, we’ve probably heard it. And with an industry cluttered with offers and options left and right, sometimes it’s hard to navigate the best way to go. So, we thought the blog option, might be a good way to help those who are seeking financial advice.

Since our blog is brand new, we will be moderating all comments that we receive. So they will be read before they are posted. As they say, we like to keep it clean … However, as long as they pertain to our goal of seeking financial advice, they will be posted in their entirety.

I also strongly encourage, those who are NEW to blogging and to our current members, that this is NOT a forum to post that you can’t access your account or having trouble logging on-line or anything of that nature, for those concerns please e-mail info@hopewellfcu.org. Also, please, please do not post any personal information on this blog, you never know who’s out there and may be interested in stealing your identity.

And as I said, I don’t have all the answers. So, from time to time, someone on our staff may respond to your questions as well. We’ll introduce you to them and include their picture and what they do here at Hopewell Federal, should they be the one to respond.

So, without further a do, we’d love to hear from you. If you’re working all the time, and have financial concerns that have been nagging away at you, but you just haven’t had the opportunity to ask them, this is the place. So, go ahead and Ask Al! I’m looking forward to hearing from you!